The use of plastic materials in the food processing industry has heretofore posed unavoidable health risks, principally due to the difficulties in detecting the presence of such materials when they are accidently introduced into the food product. Likewise, other elastomeric materials such as rubber materials are frequently utilized as components in the food processing system which processes the food product. When these materials are subjected to temperature change or wear, or even due to mechanical breakdown over the passage of time, their brittleness tends to increase resulting in an easily fracturable material. For this reason, these materials commonly fail through breakage or sloughing off of small pieces, often resulting in piece fragments being introduced into the food product.
Conventional techniques for detecting such materials within the food stuff have included screening or filtering of the food stuff. This solution, however, is viable only when the food stuff being processed is in liquid form and where no particulates are present in the food stuff. Moreover, such screening or filtering can unnecessarily alter the characteristics of the food stuff and requires additional expense in the food processing equipment. Accordingly, there has been no easy or practical method to detect elastomeric materials which are inadvertently lodged within the food product.